SC makes it easy for lawmakers to keep personal finances quiet

By Rick Brundrett | The Nerve

Since 1993, a concrete company with ties to the Florence County Republican – one of the Palmetto State’s most powerful lawmakers – has received more than $30 million in state funding, mainly through the S.C. Department of Transportation, payment records reviewed by The Nerve show.

Leatherman was president of Florence Concrete Products Inc. when he joined the Senate in 1981 and served in that position until 1993, records show. What the longtime Senate Finance Committee chairman hasn’t publicly revealed in recent years, however, is that he holds stock in the concrete company and therefore continues to have a financial stake in the business.

But the senator hasn’t publicly revealed another for-profit company registered under his name since 2006 and named after him – Hugh Leatherman LLC.

South Carolina is the only state in the nation that requires officials to report just their government income, according to ethics-reform recommendations issued earlier this year by the governor-appointed S.C. Commission on Ethics Reform. Forty-seven states require some type of disclosure of private and public income sources, the report said.